New itemization for Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery

1. What the hell are plate and agility mail doing in these loot tables?

Okay, granted, I know why they’re there. They’re there because Blizzard itemized the heroic versions of the dungeons first, then scaled it down for the non-heroics and didn’t think.

Still. Think, for heaven’s sake, before you do things. I can sort of forgive Scholomance, because the items there require level 39 and will be usable in one level. But the items in Scarlet Monastery require level 28. The plate will go completely unused, because last I checked warriors and paladins still need to hit level 40 to be able to use plate, and so will the agility mail, because hunters and enhancement shamans also need to hit level 40 to be able to use mail. At best, the mail will be worn by clueless warriors and paladins, but both will be mostly just transmogrification fodder. (Nobody sane is going to use mail or plate that’s 12 levels too low unless they have absolutely no alternative.)

They could’ve just downgraded the armor classes for the non-heroic versions – turned plate into mail and mail into leather – but I guess it didn’t really occur to them.

And speaking of transmogrification fodder…

2. What’s up with all the reused models (most of which are Cataclysm-era)?

I’m torn between minding and not minding, to be honest.

Minding because all that effort put into the new dungeons, and they couldn’t come up with something better than that? Or, if they were going to reuse models… why not reuse the models they took away in the first place, such as the sets from Scholomance? You have items named after old items (such as Whitemane’s Embroidered Chapeau), why the model swap?

(Compare and contrast – models for normal-mode items for Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines both stayed put.)

The reason not to mind would be that at least this’ll make it much easier to get certain models for transmogrification, whereas before I would’ve need to farm Hour of Twilight dungeons (or, at least in one case, picked a different reward from a quest).

But then again, I find myself minding, because if they reused the models… what guarantee do I have that they’re not going to change the look of the items around at some point in the future?

Beyond the weapons that kept the original models or close enough, there are exactly two models in the whole list that I hope they keep that way. One is Metanoia Shield – it’s a green version of Voice of Reason and doesn’t exist anywhere else, and it fits the dungeon. The other is Necromantic Wand, which is a brand new model and also fits the dungeon.

The rest of this mess has got to go, and I hope it does soon. The items stick out like a sore thumb and they’re going to make anybody actually going through the dungeons look like a clown. (And I thought we were moving away from that? Wasn’t that the reasoning to normalize models from quest gear and build them into sets?) Especially execrable are the heroic druid tier 13 helm (come the hell on), the random Pandaria-model robe (yes it’s pretty, no it doesn’t fit), the normal mode warlock tier 13 shoulders (Old God tentacles? in my Scarlet Monastery? say it isn’t so), the normal-mode death knight tier 13 helms and the random TBC-oven-mitt model gloves (ugh).

…huh. Guess I’m more firmly in the camp of “I mind a hell of a lot” than I thought I was.

Thumbs up for the nods to literature in Flameweaver Koegler’s loot table, though.